Before every door
there were dragoons drinking and singing round the tables, and some
were dancing with the girls of the village. Some of them shouted at
us when they saw we were coming from Paris, and called us runaway
rebels; but Eustace showed his pass, told them what it was, for they
could not read, and desired their officer to be fetched. He came out
of the priest's house, and was very civil. He said Colonel de
Solivet had desired that all assistance should be given to us, but
that we had not been expected so soon. He really did not know where
to quarter the lady or the mules, and he advised us to go on another
league, while he dispatched an orderly with the intelligence to the
colonel. There was nothing else to be done, though my brother, after
his sleepless night, was becoming much exhausted, in spite of the
wine we gave him, while as to the mules, they had an opinion of their
own, poor things, as to going on again, and after all sorts of
fiendish noises from the coachman, and furious lashings with his
whip, the dragoons pricked them with their swords, and at last they
rushed on at a gallop that I thought would have shaken Eustace to
death.
However, before we had gone very far Solivet rode out to meet us. It
was another cause of anxiety, although it was dusk, and he had
expected us to have slept at St. Denis and to have arrived the next
day, and he asked, what could have made us start so early, just as if
we had been criminals fleeing from justice; but he took us to the
chateau where he was quartered, and, though they were much crowded
there, the family tried to make us comfortable.
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